We are experimenting with more and more types of tea and enjoying the adventure. Last night, I brewed a cup of Chai tea from Celestial Seasonings. Wow! The other C.S. flavors we’ve come to like are the Tangerine Orange Zinger and Tuscany Orange Spice. Your C.S. favorites?
I usually take my tea with honey, Mary takes hers hard and straight. I guess I’m just the wimpy one. I think I’ll look into different types of honey next.
Anyway, here’s the question. Due to laziness or lack of time, we usually heat the water in the microwave, probably strictly taboo with the best of tea snobs. Sometimes we heat the water and the tea bag in the m-wave. For you scientify types, are we doing unnatural things to the tea in the bag by zapping it in the m-wave? Are we diluting the flavor?
i too am guilty of microwaving a mug of water, but i never put the tea bag in too (usually because of the metal staples attaching the stringy thing to the bag itself). the only reason i can give for waiting until the water is hot to put the tea bag in is that it is loads of fun to watch the color slowly permeate and fill the mug.
my favorite tea that i have ever had was some red chai from south africa (rather, the tea leaves were from s. africa but i bought it in usa). i dont know the brand offhand.
i really enjoy green tea (sencha) while reading, earl grey with breakfast, and some type of spiced green tea or fruity tea while watching movies.
There is a natural foods cooperative in nearby DeKalb, IL called Duck Soup, http://ducksoupcoop.com, where I bought the…opps, almost said Marmite, there. I’d like to stop in there someday and check out their tea selection, maybe when our current tea supply runs low. I’d like to try whole tea leaves in a cup.
MMMM tea. It’s what the empire was built on. Personal favourites have to include:
Dragonfly brand Rooibos (sp?) chai
regular chai
many various fruity ones
PG tips…Although founf out their busines practises ain’t too funky a couple of weeks ago, so have switched to Teadirect for my regular tea needs.
As for microwaving the water…I don’t see a problem with it so long as the water does hit boiling point. In some ways it could be better; as you shouldn’t use re-boiled water to make tea with (it’s de-oxygenated, oxygen is very necessary for the tea to brew properly). You should also keep the tea bag in for AT LEAST a minute. I’m not sure if micro-ing’s too cool electricity consumption wise coz they use a lot of electricity. However, so do kettles…Be interesting to find that one out.
My favouritest tea in the world has to be chai. The best chai I’ve ever tasted is from a chai tent called chai walla’s…Them or the tiny tea tent. They’re at a lot of the festivals in the UK over the summer.
[quote]
probably strictly taboo with the best of tea snobs.
[quote]
As for tea snobbery; if you want to experience the height of tea snobbery you should come to an evening of tea and chess with myself and my brother.
You aren’t hurting the water by microwaving it, but you are removing all vitamins from the tea bag. I doubt you’re drinking tea for it’s vitamins, however, so you’re probably ok.
Microwaves remove the majority of vitamins out of anything you put in it. Proving this is a standard experiment in most upper level biochem courses.
Other than that I think you’re ok. Just watch out for “bumping.” If the container you are boiling is extra perfectly smooth the water won’t have a nuclei to boil around and can become super heated without boiling. Then, when you disturb this water by taking it out of the microwave it can all boil instantly and shoot into your face causing 2nd and 3rd degree burns.
This can be avoided by not using super awesome smooth mugs or by putting a little tea in the cup first so the water can boil around those particles. If you ever notice it not boiling when you think it should be, poke it with a long stick or something first.
The ceremony is important too. Around the ranch here, our tea preferences differ, so we each have our personal teapot, and then share the hot water supply. A nice big tea kettle is the ticket, heated over gas not electricity, and stopped just short of boiling point. Don’t let that water oxygenate! The real purpose of the whistle on the tea kettle is to tell you when you’ve just screwed up your water through inattention.
The golden ratio:
2 bags CS Red Zinger
1 bag CS Sleepytime Extra
2 bags Bigelow Mint Medley
If your personal teapot is large, double the bags but keep the ratio.
While I speak only for myself, I have to say that on Friday nights, a little nip of Wild Turkey 101, no cubes or mixers, is just the thing to come before the tea. Adds a nice burn…kind of like wasabi to sushi.
Wife and I used to agree on our tea blend, when we lived near a store that sold bulk Hibiscus, Chamomile, and Eucalyptus. Equal parts of those, maybe a bit heavier on the Hibiscus, is also a golden ratio.
Re: Revitalizing the thread for tea snobs…another question.
No! That’s wrong! If you must heat the water in the microwave (which is theoretically fine but goes against the whole ethos of ‘putting the kettle on’, at least add the tea bag after boiling the water. (It should really be leaves in a teapot with a tea-strainer.) You can’t make tea in water below 85 deg C (which is why you can’t make a brew on the top of large moutains because the water boild earlier due to low air pressure). It can’t be doing anything for the flavour to have the teabag sat in a mug of cold water for a few minutes.
John
(who has just come off the 3 week tea overdose of the exam period)
P.S. and no posh tea will ever beat Yorkshire Tea.
Or if you add anthing so that there are nuclei to boil around.
I’ve also noticed that, even if it doesn’t boil, when I add something, sugar, tea, whatever, if it fizzes just the tinyest little bit, the flavor is different. Sugar is completely different when that happens - not sweet. I figure it wasn’t far short of microwave boiling or would have boiled if the stuff was added sooner and the flavors (and the vitamins? I hadn’t heard of that one, ya larn sompin new everday) get burned.
Re: Re: Re: Revitalizing the thread for tea snobs…another question.
It’s just tea, it just happens to be nice. You may have found it, but it’s this stuff.
Probably not worth importing, but then it should be fairly light…
Incidentally, where does this thing about superheated but not boiling water come from? I thought it was a fairly simple thing involving pressure and temperature? How does a lack of nucleii (and aren’t there lots of H and O nucleii around anyway?) prevent the kinetic/potential energy of the molecules rising sufficiently to change the state of the water?
Tea to molecular physics in one post, fantastic.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Revitalizing the thread for tea snobs…another question.
You’d think freezing would be even simpler, yet you can have pure water as low as 26 F and still not solid. Don’t bump it, add any thing or otherwise disturb it or it will instantly become solid. Kind of like a super saturated solution.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Revitalizing the thread for tea snobs…another question.
Wrong kind of nuclei. In the boiling/bumping respect nucleus refers to small particles, like sand, a boiling stone, or a sharp edge. Not the nucleus of an atom.
I’ve been big on green tea and chai for a long time, my wife drinks coffee every morning but I’ve never been a coffee drinker…instead I drink tea every night. I even have her drinking tea at night now (but she still won’t give up the coffee). Be sure to give the African teas a shot, they aren’t REALLY tea but they are still very good and very good for you. Red Tea is especially good for you and is getting more and more attention. Also try African Honey Bush…let the tea bag steep for a good 10+ minutes, the flavor is amazing!
